President Gerry Ford; Portrait of A Common Man

Ford Used To Take Homeless People Like This Person For Rides on Air Force One

In the wake of the 38th president being buried this weekend, people all over the world have been remembering this great man. One of the things that reporters here at The Spoof want to focus on is this man's great appeal to the common man and his tremendous dedication and commitment to the US armed forces, one of only a few bastions in US culture where there is any semblance of ethnic diversity.

Reporters here at The Spoof feel that it is no accident that this president, while studying at the University of Michigan (a state supported school), played football on two national-championship teams there and won the team's most valuable player in 1934 as an offensive center. What more common position is there than a dependable center?

Unfortunately, Ford's politics, while in office, did not remain centrist, but that is another story. We are here to celebrate the common man that was President Gerry Ford.

American football, for those who don't know, is considered probably the most common of American sports. A very physical game, it, along with Hockey are definitely the blue collars of the sports world, or the rugbys of Europe.

After graduating from the University of Michigan, Ford took a job coaching football and boxing in the Northeast. Then, during WWII, he was drafted to serve in the Navy as a gunnery Sargent. He did not run from the prospect of serving his country. He was proud of it and saw two years of duty on the deck of the aircraft carrier, USS Monterey.

After his war experience, Ford felt the compelling need to help his fellow servicemen and ran for congress in 1948 and won. During his first campaign, he met a bag lady in a New Jersey grocery store named Eliza and married her. They had 15 children and moved to a trailer park in the South. Their children were named after aircraft carriers in the South Pacific, Nimitz, Wyoming, Dakota, Monterey.

Once in congress, Ford continued his great support for US military initiatives supporting the Department of Defense any way he could. He also criticized his predecessor, President Johnson, a weak president for caving to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for not pursuing the Vietnam War more vigorously.

Never a man for grandstanding or calling attention to himself and always in touch with his constituents, Gerry was perfectly happy with his role as a congressmen voting everyday to support the common, US serviceman all over the world, and, was only elected to the two most powerful positions in the world, US Vice President and President by default.

On October 10th, 1973, two days after Vice President Spiro Agnew jumped ship, Ford was ready to volunteer again. It wasn't long until the waters rose so high that even the president, Richard Nixon had to bail.

Ford had inherited the most powerful job in the country. As captain of the Titanic, he also inherited a crippled economy ravaged by inflation and unemployment.

While commander-in-chief, in great acts of compassion, Ford had a reputation for pardoning criminals like Richard Nixon. He was also known for taking homeless persons that he would meet on the street and strike up conversations with on Air Force One with him.

It was reported by biographers that frequently Ford would exhaust the homeless persons in conversation while on the presidential jet, so much so that they would end up sleeping the rest of the trip.

But Ford's concern for everyman did not rest on the home front, he was also concerned with common laborers of China, the Middle East and Kazakhstan before news journalist, Sagdiyev Borat came to power there.

Ford's political career and rides on Air Force One came to a screeching halt during the 1976 presidential elections when he ran into an even more common man, peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter. It was also written by biographers that Carter's support by southern rock groups like Lynrd Skynrd (named after a high school shop teacher) and the Allman Brothers Band helped him win tremendously the popular South.

In other news today, George Bush, in an effort to sympathize with the aging, Fidel Castro and welcome Cuba in as a part of the Western hemisphere, grows a beard and dons a green, army jacket.

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